“WARRIORS: EXTRAORDINARY TALES FROM THE BATTLEFIELD” 2005 - Chapter 11 - Pp 239-257

Hollywood Hero By Max Hastings

IT IS A SCENE depicted in scores of could play this sort of corny stuff better than low-budget movies produced during the Murphy did. twenty years after World War II ended: on a shell-torn hillside, a GI pokes up his head as a Yet there is a profound pathos about group of Germans offer surrender. He is shot. Audie Murphy and the war film in which he His body rolls back into the arms of his buddy, starred. It was based upon his own experience who stares at it for a few moments in shocked of combat. When the Second World War disbelief. Then, boyish features frozen into a ended, he was probably only nineteen, at most mask of determination, the surviving soldier twenty - his birth date is uncertain, and seems grasps his carbine and charges single-handed to have been falsified to enable him to enlist at the German machinegun positions, shooting under age. Yet he had become the most and grenading until every treacherous kraut decorated American soldier of the conflict. lies dead. Then he stands numb and drained Again and again in a succession of actions in amid the carnage as the rest of his platoon Italy and France he displayed his courage in belatedly advance to join him. They stare the face of the enemy. He possessed extra- warily at this lonely figure, half awed and half ordinary qualities as a fighting infantryman, appalled by a display of suicidal courage they not least an eagerness to return to duty after know they cannot match. being wounded three times. He cherished some notions of becoming a career soldier, but This is a Hollywood caricature of war, abandoned these when his fame attracted the acted out many times by John Wayne and his attention of James Cagney, who was re- kind. The scene features prominently in the sponsible for bringing him to Hollywood and 1955 movie To Hell and Back, with Audie launching him on a career in films. In 1948 Murphy playing the angry GI. The star was the heavily-ghosted memoir of his war not much of an actor. His chief assets on experiences, To Hell and Back, became a best- screen were the baby-faced good looks of an seller, which led in turn to the film in which he all-American boy, which kept fans happy so uncomfortably played himself. For all through his appearances in twenty-five years Murphy's celebrity, happiness and fulfillment of cheap westerns. His performance in To eluded him. He was painfully conscious of his Hell and Back is wooden and one- paucity of acting talent. It is difficult to be dimensional. As the young soldier, he views unmoved by the history of a man who shot-blasted battlefields with the sort of contributed so much as a wartime soldier, yet dismay a dutiful schoolboy might show, found it impossible to parley military gazing upon a classroom trashed by a cluster achievement into any rapprochement in of delinquents. In scenes behind the lines, himself. amid bar girls in seedy Italian clip joints, he Murphy was born into a dirt-poor looks as embarrassed as he deserves to be. sharecropper's family in Hunt County, Texas, Violins dominate the musical score. No cliché probably in June 1925. One of twelve of soldiers dialogue is omitted from the script. children of whom nine survived into A film critic might say that Ronald Reagan adulthood, he gained little schooling before his despairing father abandoned their home. than a rifleman, but the young soldier was Audie's class-mates mocked him as 'short- having none of it. He remained in the same breeches', because his only pair of trousers unit from beginning to end, until he became shrank with relentless washing. After the fifth almost the sole survivor of the band which had grade he embarked on several teenage years of mustered in North Africa. casual labour - cotton-picking, selling newspapers, working in a gas station. His Murphy had to wait some months mother died of heart disease in 1941, and most before first experiencing action in July 1943, of his siblings disappeared into orphanages. following the invasion of Sicily. Most He himself had shown an early interest in the soldiers in a theatre of war are willing to do possibility of becoming a soldier. One of the what is asked of them, but are careful not to few positive influences upon his childhood seek additional hazards. Murphy's eagerness was a local World War I veteran who enthused to join patrols and take point during advances, the boy with his reminiscences. The US Army together with an obvious dexterity with was a familiar refuge for young Southerners weapons, earned him a rapid promotion to lacking money or education. When America corporal. He joined the Italian campaign with entered the war in December 1941, Murphy the US 3rd Division, landing near Salerno, and sought to enlist. He was rejected by both the was committed to a series of battles around the Marines and the paratroops. This was Volturno River. Encountering Germans on a unsurprising, since he stood five feet five night patrol, after a firefight he and his men inches tall, and weighed just 112 pounds. The took over in a quarry. The enemy pursued army eventually accepted him in June 1942, them, but were halted by American fire which aged eighteen on his record, probably killed three men and caused the others to seventeen in reality. After training at Camp surrender. This action earned Murphy a Wolters, Texas, 'Baby', as he was initially sergeant's stripes. nicknamed by comrades, was shipped overseas. In February 1943 he joined B A bout of malaria put him into hospital Company of the 1/15th Infantry in North for the Anzio landing. Like many other Africa as a replacement. infantrymen in the same predicament, when discharged he fiercely resisted efforts to send A reserved man all his life, beneath an him as a replacement to a new regiment. He iron mask of self-control it was plain that insisted upon rejoining the 15th Infantry, Murphy nursed a lot of anger, as well he committed to heavy fighting in the beachhead. might. From the outset of his military career Murphy sought the front constantly, and he showed a determination to succeed as a became well-known for his enthusiasm for soldier, and also a satisfaction in finding seeking out the enemy alone, stalking and something he could belong to - the platoon. killing Germans wherever he could find them. For the first time and perhaps last time, here He earned his first Bronze Star for leading a was a group amidst which he felt at home. night patrol to destroy with Molotov cocktails Loyalty to the handful of men among whom and rifle grenades a damaged tank which the he served was among the most striking Germans were striving to repair. Another features of his wartime career. Again and attack of malaria sent him back to a field again he refused opportunities and promotions hospital for ten days, but he returned in time to that might cause him to be separated from join the advance on Rome late in May 1944. them. Almost at the outset, an officer troubled Offered a battlefield commission, he declined by his slight figure and boyish features sought lest he should be obliged to leave his platoon, to make Murphy a headquarters runner rather which whom he shared a disappointing leave in the Italian capital after its liberation: 'We His platoon had the equivocal feelings about prowl through Rome like ghosts', he wrote him which soldiers usually display towards later, 'finding no satisfaction in anything we zealous warriors - they respected his courage, see or do. I feel like a man briefly reprieved but feared that it might prove excessively from death; and there is no joy within me. We dangerous to the interests of others. can have no hope until the war is ended. Thinking of the men on the fighting fronts, I Murphy cut a lonely figure, a man who grow lonely on the streets of Rome.' seldom received a letter from home at mail call, because he knew few people who might Murphy was a grave young man, who care to write. He was the sort of soldier whom embraced responsibility and seemed happy to commanding officers cherish, because they accept it on behalf of others less ardent. He need them to win battles. A distinguished fulfilled the hardest duty of a soldier in American World War II infantry officer wrote: combat: he was willing to engage the enemy 'A few guys carry your attack, and the rest of even when logic and instinct incited more the people sort of participate and arrive on the normal men to seek shelter or to flee. Murphy objective shortly after everybody else.' This is claimed to be as vulnerable to fear as any of an important truth. Likewise another veteran, his comrades. This was patently untrue, Colonel William DePuy: 'The average man, though his excellent tactical judgment helped like nine out of ten, does not have an instinct him to keep his nerve when others lost it. He for the battlefield, doesn't relish it, and will not demonstrated a gift for judging a combat act independently except under direct orders.' situation, assessing whether holding a position Audie Murphy, it was plain to all those who or moving forward was in reality as perilous as observed him in action, was the one man in the sound and fury of battle persuaded other ten, indeed the one in a thousand, even if his men that it was: 'Experience helps. You soon exceptionality caused a 3rd Division officer learn that a situation is seldom as black as the later to observe enigmatically that the young imagination paints it. Some always get hero 'was not the most admired guy in the through.' world.' Such is usually the case with any soldier, sailor or airman vulnerable to the As an undersized boy, Murphy was a charge of being a 'gong-chaser.' Murphy's feisty classroom fighter who taught himself to behavior created some of the same discomfort repress visible emotion. 'I'm not the crying among comrades as did that of Guy Gibson in kind,' he told an army nurse, and there is no the Royal Air Force. reason to disbelieve him. His loyalty to his platoon seemed almost obsessive: 'As long as The baby-faced sergeant won a there's a man in the line, maybe I feel that my Distinguished Service Cross during an place is up there beside him.' For all his advance up an enemy-held hillside near the unimpressive physique, he possessed a natural town of Ramatuelle on 15 August 1944, the authority, enforced by cool, piercing eyes. day of the Anvil landings in southern France. Instinctively at home with weapons, he Three hours after crossing the beach south of handled every kind of infantry small arms with St. Tropez, his battalion was driven to the assurance. He suffered not the slightest ground by German machine-gun fire as they hesitation, such as was commonplace among neared a ridge crest. Murphy's platoon was citizen soldiers, about killing his fellow man. moved forward from reserve to seek a new Most combatants seldom fired their rifles in line of approach. Soon it too was pinned action, and rarely hit anything when they did down. Perceiving that the enemy was out of so. 'Murph' always fired, often effectively. range of carbines and grenades, on his own initiative Murphy crawled back downhill to round to a flank, then charged alone with the heavy-weapons platoon, borrowed a .30 grenades and sub-machine-gun, destroying the calibre machine-gun, returned with Private enemy ambush party. He received a Silver Lattie Tipton to find a firing position, and Star for this action. Three days later, several quickly killed two of the defending Germans. of his men were shot down in a similar Having exhausted his single belt of .30 calibre surprise encounter. Murphy worked his way ammunition, he and Tipton charged and forward until he could see the German overran one enemy trench with carbines and positions, then directed artillery and mortar grenades. A German soldier in a nearby fire by radio until the enemy retired with foxhole waved a white flag. Tipton rose to substantial casualties. This action, too, earned accept his surrender, and was at once shot him a Silver Star. dead. He was Murphy's closest friend in the army. Enraged, Murphy picked up a German A cynic might suggest that the US MG42 machine-gun lying at his feet and Army had by now identified a story-book charged along the hillside, throwing grenades hero, and heaped decorations on him with with his free hand. One by one, and entirely extravagant enthusiasm. Other men did as alone, he destroyed a succession of enemy much on the battlefield, yet their deeds went positions, killing thirteen Germans. The rest unremarked, or were rewarded with a single of the unit, at whom he had been shouting medal. The US 3rd Division, a good formation curses and imprecations to follow him, then which paid heavily in casualties for its advanced to occupy the ridgeline. repeated commitment to combat, was un- commonly generous in recommending awards After months of stagnation first in - 11.6 percent of all the US Army's wartime Italian mud and then dust, the American Medals of Honor were awarded to men from invaders of southern France exulted in the its ranks. Yet there is no reason to doubt the swift dash up the Rhone Valley. Murphy facts of each action for which Murphy was wrote: 'We experience great exhilaration, for honoured. The American and British armies there is nothing so good for the morale of the in northwest Europe suffered chronic foot soldier as progress.' Late in August a difficulty because many of their infantry units shell fragment which nicked his heel cost were sluggish in attack. On encountering even Murphy two weeks in hospital. By now all the small numbers of enemy, it was a habitual vice men of his platoon with whom he had found of Eisenhower's foot soldiers to halt and call comradeship in North Africa and Italy were down artillery and mortar fire, accepting a gone - wounded or dead. He forged no new delay of hours or even days, rather than to close relationship with their successors. He launch a quick, bold infantry assault. By was widely perceived as a soldier fighting a contrast, here was Sergeant Audie Murphy, war of his own: 'So many men have come and again and again offering demonstrations gone that I can no longer keep track of them . . straight out of the infantry manual which, had . I have isolated myself as much as possible, they been widely emulated, would have won desiring only to do my work and be left alone. the war months sooner. Who can be surprised I feel burnt out, emotionally and physically that senior officers were eager to highlight exhausted. Let the hill be strewn with corpses such a man? And who can deny that Murphy's so long as I do not have to turn over the bodies courage merited the applause which it and find the familiar face of a friend.' Within received? days of returning to his unit from hospital Murphy led a patrol into a German ambush At last he accepted a battlefield com- which pinned down his men. He crawled mission, becoming commander of the platoon with which he had served since North Africa. him. Only when his ammunition was On 26 October he was seriously wounded in exhausted did he slip back to rejoin the men of the hip by a sniper's bullet. As is often the his company, who had been awed spectators of way in war, however skilful the soldier, this performance from the comparative safety Murphy suffered his most grievous injury of a forest two hundred yards to the rear. He when taken by surprise, in a situation in which led them forward once more against the his prowess counted for nothing. He merely battered and dispirited Germans, who turned overtaxed his luck. Many hours elapsed in retreat. Murphy then collapsed. For the before he reached a field hospital. The wound Holtzwihr episode he was awarded the turned gangrenous, and he was obliged to Congressional Medal of Honor, together with spend three dreary and often painful months the Legion of Merit for his achievements enduring treatment and recuperation, his life throughout the campaign. saved by penicillin. 'These Krauts are getting to be better shots than they used to be or else This very young man was not my luck's playing out on me,' he wrote unreasonably thrilled by his deluge of ruefully from his bed. 'I guess some day they decorations. After hearing that he was to will tag me for keeps.' receive the Medal of Honor, he wrote home: 'since that is all the medals they have to offer Had he wished, he could have gone I'll have to take it easy for a while.' First home to the United States with his medals and Lieutenant Murphy was henceforward his wounds. Instead, by January 1945 he was considered too precious a commodity to be back with his battalion in Alsace, participating allowed to continue in service with a rifle in the battle of the Colmar Pocket. On 26 company. After a leave in Paris, somewhat to January he was commanding his company, his dismay he spent the last weeks of the every other officer having been killed in campaign as a liaison officer. Though he unsuccessful attacks. The 15th Infantry were often found excuses to explore the forward once again preparing to advance near the areas, the war was almost won. He was village of Holtzwihr when the Germans denied any further authorized combat role. launched a counter-attack with tanks and foot soldiers. Murphy ordered his heavily out- Murphy had become the epitome of the numbered men to pull back, but himself American hero. In the aftermath of VE-Day, remained in his position to direct artillery fire. the army and his fellow-countrymen hastened As the Germans came on, the lieutenant to celebrate his achievement. Life magazine noticed an American tank destroyer on fire featured him on its cover. Absurd calculations nearby. The armoured M-10 had been were made about the number of Germans this abandoned by its crew after they rashly one-man task force had personally killed, ignored Murphy's warning not to expose wounded or captured. European governments themselves, and had suffered the cones- added their own garlands to the symbolic quences. A .50 calibre machine-gun stood liberator's collection - Lieutenant Murphy was loaded and idle on the hull mounting. Murphy finally entitled to wear twenty-eight medals. ran forward seized the gun and began pouring From Paris, on 10 June 1945, he was among fire into the approaching German infantry. the very first Americans to be flown home. Some attackers were later found dead within a Yet what was home? He had left the few yards of his position. For an hour he Lone Star state less than three years earlier as maintained his defense despite a leg wound a nobody who knew almost no one. 'Who after two further German hits on the tank would have expected Shorty to be anything destroyer, and with flames surging around more than another kid from Texas?' mused an old acquaintance. Murphy evinced a stab of the grave young veteran on a salary and a disgust about the fashion in which both his personal contract, then spent some time local towns, McKinney and Greenville, which studying his man to decide how best to make had treated the threadbare orphan with disdain an actor of him. For a year Murphy lodged in three years earlier, now fought to claim him. Cagney's Beverly Hills pool house. The star Everybody wanted to meet and shower praise decided against any formal training, but upon the absurdly handsome, apparently employed a dance instructor to teach the diffident hero. When he went to a barber's young war veteran to walk gracefully. He shop for a haircut a crowd gathered outside, noted that Murphy had an excellent memory peering fascinated through the window at the and remarkable powers of observation, but not young god. much else. He persuaded him, somewhat unwillingly, to read aloud to an empty room, But here, once again, was a familiar to strengthen his speaking voice. problem for commanders: what was to be done with the successful warrior? He had no The Texan farm boy found all this education, and indeed no great intellect. Most pretty dispiriting. Again and again he was of the comrades whom he had known - in tempted to throw in his hand. Acutely some cases loved - were dead. He appeared conscious of his disqualifications to become a without vices, yet possessed only one public performer, he wrote to a friend: 'James demonstrable skill: he could fight. Continuing Cagney is trying to teach me show business, pain from his hip wound made it improbable but I'm afraid he doesn't have much to work that he should continue a combat career in the with.' The star and his protégé eventually fell army, even if new enemies could be found for out and parted company, for reasons neither him to kill. He was too deficient in the ever discussed and which remain a matter for qualities of a team player to seem a future speculation. It was widely acknowledged in general. On 21 September 1945, immensely Hollywood that Murphy traveled with demons, famous yet with no fixed abode or future, and it was generally assumed that these Audie Murphy was discharged from military derived from his war experiences. There was service. much talk, as well there might be, about his insistence upon sleeping with a pistol under It was a sight of the photograph on the his pillow, sometimes waking from night- Life cover which convinced the superstar mares to fire it at an unoffending cupboard or James Cagney that this boy could make it in mirror. That the demons existed is undoubted, movies: 'I saw that Audie could be but it seems reasonable to suppose that they photographed well from any angle, and I predated Murphy's war experiences. figured that a guy with drive enough to take him that far in the war had drive enough to Resigned to attempting to make a become a star.' Murphy at first ignored a success of Hollywood, for a time he attended cable from Cagney in Hollywood, seeking a drama classes, but quit disgusted by what he meeting. When at last they got together, the perceived as the left-wing attitudes he star - who was exactly Murphy's height - encountered there. Exponents of a wide range enthused: 'Dignity from within! Not the kind of political causes sought in vain to recruit the imposed upon you from without. Spiritual hero for their own purposes. Murphy found it overtones. He looks like Huckleberry Finn impossible to take seriously drama exercises grown up. No, not really grown up. There's such as pretending to sew up an imaginary pair something in those eyes that is as old as death of gloves. He adopted the customary Beverly and yet as young as springtime.' Cagney put Hills panacea for trauma by visiting a psychiatrist. Asked how their meetings went, the trade. He had exactly the gifts to convince Murphy responded with laconic wit: 'He went an audience that he was, indeed, the lonely off to see his psychiatrist.' The aspirant actor gunfighter of legend. By a notable irony, fell in with an alcoholic screenwriter of however, in order to fulfill his screen destiny intellectual pretensions named David 'Spec' the kid from Texas had to acquire some McClure, who became his cultural mentor and essential skills, prominent among them that of launched him - with indifferent success - upon riding a horse. There had been no money for a programme of self-education. horses in a Hunt County childhood. His war wounds troubled him constantly: he was in It was plain to most people who discomfort in the saddle, and in pain when he encountered Audie that he was a psychological fell out of it. Yet here, true grit prevailed. He mess of epic proportions. He met and married turned himself into a fine horseman. Filming a beautiful starlet named Wanda Hendrix, then as Billy the Kid, on the first day his stunt lived with her through a few sad years in double broke his collarbone. Thereafter, which his career prospered while hers sagged. Murphy did almost all his own stunt work on She found it hard to live with his tensions, the picture. expressed in chronic stomach disorders. He once told her that in action he had seen the Willard Willingham, who later took up face of his own father in that of every German a role as Murphy's stunt double when one was soldier he killed. She grew to perceive that he needed, also became his personal assistant and was a gloomy, tormented soul: 'Audie's worst closest friend. Willingham later said: 'He was fault is his pessimism,' she said. He had no pretty strange in those days. He was difficult sustaining core of values or self-belief, and as for everyone.' A man of natural good manners a result was fearful of dropping his defenses in who recoiled from coarse behavior, Murphy relationships with either sex. There was a had no patience with people who offended his chronic melancholy, apparent to all who knew own sense of propriety, not least in their him well. He lived on the shortest of fuses, choice of language. He was sometimes heard once shooting a light switch amid his midnight to lacerate erring crew members on set. Those torments, wading into fist fights with men rash who worked with him learned to be wary of enough to challenge him. He was sometimes his notorious temper. seen by his wife holding a loaded gun to his own mouth. 'He played with death as if it Murphy went on to make some forty were a toy,' Hendrix told Spec McClure. It Western pictures. For all his limitations, he surprised no one when the marriage ended in became a star of his day. 'Audie could learn divorce in 1950. the lines and hit his marks. Anything else about acting was a mystery to him,' remarked Yet Murphy possessed two qualities a fellow performer. Critics noted that he could that could, and did, carry him a long way in never be a convincing ensemble player, the Hollywood of the late 1940s and the because on screen he always looked what he 1950s: looks and charm. He swiftly was - a man apart, a man alone. Even among graduated from a big part in a 1949 West Point a screen cluster of cowboys, never for a courtroom drama, Beyond Glory - 'I had eight moment did Murphy seem a credible member words in the script, seven more than I could of a gang. Yet none of this mattered to the handle' - to bigger things. In 1949 he starred public, who idolized the handsome kid with as William Bonney, Billy the Kid, in The Kid the steady, hurt eyes, whose wartime achieve- from Texas. This part convinced him that his ments they never forgot. Whatever Murphy's future lay in Westerns - 'oaters' in the jargon of insecurities in other departments he was sufficiently assured of his own courage to be whole venture which he freely acknowledged unafraid sometimes to play cowards on off set. celluloid. From 1949 onwards his celebrity was increased by the publication of his war The screen role of which re remained memoir, ghosted by Spec McClure. most proud was that of Fleming, another young soldier, in John Huston's 1951 film of The battlefield feats recorded under Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage. Murphy's name in To Hell and Back are a Critics were unimpressed by the movie, yet matter of record. However, most of the book Murphy - on whose casting Huston insisted, consists of reported dialogue between the against the strong wishes of the studio, MGM soldier and his platoon. It will always be a - was able to play an infantryman of the matter for speculation how far these are American Civil War period suffering fictionalized. The tone is half-right, but the experiences at least as harrowing as his own text sometimes attributes implausible with a conviction he could not bring to a reflective powers to Murphy the young portrayal of himself. Murphy's career as an infantryman. The book is laden with cliché, of actor, if not as a star, was fatally flawed by a a kind which suggest the voice of McClure resistance to masquerade or self-revelation. rather than that of the nominal author. Here His own being was rooted in a painful, even was no Frederic Manning - though both men exaggerated, sense of reality. He found it fought, and lost, bitter battles with publishers impossible to throw himself convincingly into whom they sought to convince that no soldiers' the fantasies contrived by directors and dialogue could be credible without its screenwriters. He felt a disdain for actors who blasphemies and obscenities. Murphy himself had not served in the wartime armed forces, never disowned the book - how could he? - and showed it. Many of them responded in But he was outspokenly critical of the kind, by spurning Murphy. Kirk Douglas subsequent film, which he considered a thought him 'a vicious little guy.' After a betrayal of the soldiers among whom he serious falling out with Tony Curtis, Murphy served. It is a preposterous notion that any never spoke to the star again. He saved his man could convincingly re-enact on celluloid admiration for the relatively few Hollywood feats which he himself had performed on the figures such as James Stewart, Lee Marvin and battlefield. Murphy cringed before the studio Clark Gable who had served their country in copy on the movie posters: 'Just a kid too uniform. young to shave . . . but old enough to win every medal his country had to give.' After his separation from Wanda Hendrix, Murphy told Spec McClure that he In the Hollywood of that period men would live a hermit's life: 'I'll be the poor were expected to die apparently bloodlessly on man's Howard Hughes.' Four days after he screen. Murphy remembered all too vividly won his divorce decree, however, he married a the reality of severed limbs, mangled torsos, Texan girl named Pamela Archer, with whom bare bones and dangling intestines. He fought he had two sons whom he adored. The couple in vain to toughen the bowdlerized script were soon living apart. Murphy embarked dialogue. He understood, as the film makers upon a long succession of casual liaisons - a had no desire to understand, that courage is familiar pastime for Hollywood stars, but one displayed in war against a backdrop of almost which he pursued with an almost inhuman unbridled squalor and sorrow. The detach- detachment. He spent many hours alone, even ment he displays on screen as the star of To on movie sets. An actor who worked with him Hell and Back hints at the disgust about the on Gunfight at Comanche Creek (1963) and Arizona Raiders (1965) said: 'He always which the film was based. Brooding about its looked as if he'd rather be somewhere else.' contemptuous anti-Americanism, he was His contempt for his own thespian skills never tempted to refuse to return to the set. Murphy diminished, but he developed sufficient confi- the patriot was disgusted by the novelist's dence in his powers as a box-office draw to cynicism. 'Green never met a real American, I impose his will on set. He made himself seem think. He believes a guy who goes to Harvard foolish by declaring one day that he wanted to and lives in Boston is a real American. Did raise his game, to play in screen adaptations of you ever meet anyone from Boston who went Ibsen and Dostoyevsky. The nearest he came to Harvard? They all come from anyplace but to attempting such pinnacles was to play the . . .' In Saigon, Murphy was made deeply lead opposite Michael Redgrave in a unhappy by the army of child street beggars. disastrously misconceived 1957 production of 'There's always children,' he told Spec Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American. McClure wearily, recalling Naples and Rome. 'The children grow up and become soldiers. The film was chiefly shot on location in And somebody gets the soldiers together and Vietnam, which was enjoying an interval of declares a war. So the soldiers cripple and kill relative tranquility between the French war each other until one side hollers "Uncle." with the Vietminh and the American war with Then people ring bells, blow whistles and talk the Vietcong. By now Murphy was past thirty about how great peace is for a while. But new - far older than that in experience, still children come along, new soldiers, new wars.' absurdly younger in looks. Neither he nor If these were banal sentiments, there is no Redgrave was first choice for their parts, reason to doubt their sincerity. which were intended for Montgomery Clift and Laurence Olivier. Redgrave, a veteran The film's interior sequences were shot British actor who represented the highest in Rome, from which Murphy several times standards of his profession on stage and revisited Anzio, scene of some of his most screen, recoiled in disgust from Murphy's brutal wartime experiences. His wife Pamela, approach to acting after hearing the Texas whom he seems to have made no effort to shrug, 'It beats picking cotton.' Murphy, in his contact during his months in Asia, also made turn, knew nothing of Redgrave's reputation, the Anzio trip with him. Shooting of The and plainly cared little for the bisexual Quiet American was completed on 4 June Englishman. He did not enjoy his weeks in 1957, thirteen years almost to the day since Saigon's thick, clammy, hundred-degree Murphy had first entered Rome as a young GI. temperatures. He contracted appendicitis and He was thirty-two or thirty-three according to had to be rushed to hospital in Hong Kong, at army records. His movie career was already vast cost in delays to the production. One slipping downhill, though it would stumble on scene in the movie required him to carry an for a few more years. He appeared in forty- injured Redgrave out of danger during a four films in all, and saved none of the money firefight in paddy fields. Redgrave was a big, from them. He was chronically careless, heavy man. For Murphy, with his slight frame indeed reckless, about his finances, a regular and war wounds, the experience of supporting and unlucky gambler. He went bankrupt when him was an agony; intensified when a retake a business venture failed. was needed. Murphy found himself wholly out of During his convalescence from the step with the new world of the 1960s, and appendix operation, Murphy made the grave above all with the protest movement against mistake of reading Graham Greene's novel on the war in Vietnam. He himself was a product of an earlier era and a different ethic, in which mind. He responded: 'I was just thinking that any decent man's actions were governed by with one hand grenade, a person could get rid loyalty to his country's chosen causes. He of all those no-talent bastards at one stroke.' found his reputation borrowed in disturbing circumstances when Lieutenant William Murphy failed in his oft-expressed Calley of the American Division, the officer ambition to find some means of achieving held responsible for the 1968 My Lai financial security without continuing to make massacre, testified after his atrocities were third-rate Westerns. By the end of the 1960s exposed: 'We thought we would go to the third-rate Western era was about through, Vietnam and be Audie Murphys. Kick in the and so was Murphy's box-office appeal. He door. Run in the hooch, give it a good burst - was killed in a light plane crash in fog at kill. And get a big kill ratio in Vietnam.' To Roanoke, Virginia, on 28 May 1971, aged those who wished Murphy well, it was forty-five or forty-six. It is hard to feel that embarrassing enough that such a soldier as death deprived him of anything he valued. His Calley should cite his example. Matters lavish funeral at Arlington National Cemetery became worse, however, when Murphy flouted the wishes expressed in his 1965 will himself observed staunchly that he thought that he should be buried without ceremony, Calley guilty of nothing worse than a military and especially without any military presence. misjudgment. The star-hero's achievements of He wanted to lie anywhere save at Arlington, which 1945 America had been so proud, the he said Yet even if America's relationship killing of Germans in industrial quantities, for with its former hero had grown uneasy, at his which he was rewarded with a chest full of death the nation was determined to reclaim decorations and the applause of his country, possession of Audie Murphy. inspired much more equivocal responses from a new generation. What kind of man was this Spec McClure recorded a conversation who could have taken life so readily at his with Murphy in the 1950s in which he said: 'I country's bidding, and who displayed no have a deadly hatred of fear. It has me by the apparent misgivings about the murderous task throat, and I have it by the throat. We have of a soldier? Murphy faced further been struggling for many years. And I still embarrassing publicity in 1970, when he was don't know which will win the battle. But that indicted for the attempted murder of a dog very hatred of fear has driven me to do a lot of trainer at whom he had allegedly fired a pistol. things which I have never bothered to explain He was acquitted for lack of evidence, but was and which nobody understands. Fear is the quizzed outside the courtroom by reporters blot on the thinking processes, crippling the about whether he had indeed let off a gun at individual's ability to act. I am not brave. I the man. 'If I had,' said Murphy defiantly, 'do simply perform first and think later.' you think I would have missed?' Everyone knew that whatever the truth of this episode, Making allowance for artistic licence in the star possessed a dark and unhealthy McClure's version of Murphy's words, the obsession with firearms. sentiment rings true. Most men who act Murphy's relationships with studio bravely in war do so because they dread executives, never cordial, were not assisted succumbing to fear more than they dread the when word got around of a remark he made risk of being killed. Like more than a few one day in the 1960s, when visiting the such men, in war as in peace Murphy fought Universal lot to discuss a new movie. As he as many battles with himself as with the was gazing thoughtfully at a cluster of studio enemy. If he lacked self-belief, he possessed executives, somebody asked what was on his willpower of an extraordinary kind, together with an anger that never left him. He was better at fighting than anything else, and when the fighting was over he found himself at a loss. Captain Ian Fraser of the Royal Navy, who won a Victoria Cross in the Second World War, wisely observed: 'A man is trained for the task that might win him a VC. He is not trained to cope with what follows.

There was no joy for Murphy in movie stardom. He seemed to hate himself for accepting the indignities of Hollywood life in return for fame, cash and an unlimited supply of pretty girls. He perceived himself as a one- man freak show, the war hero exhibited before a predatory and invasive public in a fashion little different from that of the Elephant Man almost a century earlier. Wretched though his childhood was, it seems likely that after the war he might have found repose more easily in a humbler role in the sort of town he first came from, rather than in Hollywood. James Cagney may have done Murphy no favours by his patronage in 1945. Other men honoured for notable battlefield feats somehow contrived to return to civilian life without pretension or trauma. The youngest British winner of the Victoria Cross in the First World War was a gardener whom came home in 1918 to spend the rest of his life among flowers and fruits. By contrast, the experience of Holly- wood stardom almost destroyed Audie Murphy's fragile self-esteem. He was a superb foot soldier and close-quarter fighter who deserved well of his country for his wartime service, but whom celebrity exposed as a tragic figure. It laid bare his lack of other gifts, indispensable to the conduct of a normal existence in time of peace. Murphy's history is a cautionary tale for any modern reader rash enough to envy those who experience the thrills and adventures offered by war.